Lured by the siren song of modular synthesis and DIY electronics, but not sure how to navigate the piles of requisite knowledge – or uncertain what the trip down this rabbit hole might have in store?

For years, Tom Whitwell’s Music Thing was a beloved daily read, as that site and this one were among the early blog-format destinations for music tech. Tom moved on – something about a major day-gig at a paper called The Times, perhaps named after the font? – but that makes us all the more delighted to get a dispatch from him. In this guest column for CDM, he introduces one project, a brilliant FM radio sequencer, but also helps us catch up on reading on modular synthesis and electronics dating back to the origins of the technology. And he has a realistic look at what this will do to your life – all inspired by “pure enthusiasm,” as he puts it, “this is fun, you should try it.”

Hey, isn’t that what the drug dealer said in those just-say-no instructional videos we watched in the 80s? Coincidence, I’m sure. -PK

Since buying a Eurorack modular synth a year ago, I’ve spent a lot of time building DIY synth modules and reading about synths and the people who build them. (See reading list, below, if you’d like to do the same.)

The hardest part of DIY electronics is starting out. My first step was building a few guitar pedal kits and learning by reading the Beavis Audio site. Other people start with noisemaker kits like the Atari Punk Console or circuit bending. They all lead in the same direction — down a very deep rabbit hole.

There’s a lot to buy – a kind of infrastructure you need before doing anything – soldering kit, a multimeter, and a stock of components. None of it costs much, but it’s hard and disconcerting to buy. Online megastores like Farnell or Mouser will stock 50 versions of every component. Get the part number wrong, and you accidentally order capacitors as small as grains of sand, or as large as golfballs. Smaller stores – in the UK, I use http://www.bitsbox.co.uk/ - are easier because they only stock common hobby-friendly parts.

After making a few guitar pedals, I moved onto synth modules. They’re a great DIY platform. The infrastructure is all there, in terms of power supply, case, inputs, and outputs. Parts are cheap, there’s a healthy and helpful community, and a nice learning curve, from basic utility modules to mind-bendingly complex frequency shifters and vocoders.

For this project, I was inspired by this quote from Don Buchla, the legend of west coast synthesis:

“My studio at that time was ten feet wide. It was so crowded in there we hauled the workbench out on the sidewalk on good days and set up my oscilloscope and worked out there. [John] Cage came by and for voltage control I had hooked up my keyboard to an FM module that I’d built, a little module that was an FM receiver and I could play stations on it because I had one of the first varactor tuned FMs. Cage, as you can imagine, was just enormously interested in the fact that I could tune each key to a station and then proceeded to play the radio” ( Source [PDF] )

Thirty years later, Don released the 272e module (see Matrixsynth on the announcement), a $1250, four-channel polyphonic FM Tuner. There’s also the ADDAC102, a very fancy stereo €270 Eurorack module [see Synthtopia, with a video]. I wanted something quick, cheap and easy that would let me follow in Don and John’s footsteps. After a lot of searching and a few dead ends, I found the wonderful video demo, below, of a battery-powered FM sequencer based on a €15 radio kit from Germany.

Projects like this follow a predictable curve. There’s a burst of experimental excitement at the start; receiving the crucial part, building the circuit on breadboard and realizing that — YES! — it’s going to work.

Then comes a period of frustration and tedium. Re-buying a crucial part you blew up. Fiddling with the circuit so it responds just how you want it. Transferring the breadboard layout to a piece of perfboard, or designing a PCB and waiting for it to be made in China. If you’re using an Arduino or other programmable controller, there’s a long period of writing code, battling feature creep, debugging.

During this period, you have to really, really want the thing you’re making, dreaming of how cool it will be, how much fun you’ll have playing it and telling everyone about it.

Tom's FM radio-sequencing module project, in all its glory.

Building music gear is more multidisciplinary than you might imagine. The interface and the feel is as important as the functionality. My Euclidean sequencer is a cool-looking thing, with a big LED matrix. It’s really useful – turning trains of pulses into Afro-Latin rhythms. But it’s fiddly and annoying to use. The FM Radio module could be 50% smaller – and size is important in any modular synth – but this time I wanted good big knobs for fine tuning the signals and control voltages.

So, as the project continues, you’ll spend time designing a front panel, deciding how many knobs you need, removing ones you’ll never use. And along the way, you’re learning. This time round, I wanted to get the control just right – precise, stable tuning so that stations would stay locked. That meant experimentation and [asking for help on the MuffWiggler forum]. I also spent ages reading ham radio sites, trying to work out how to make a voltage-controlled Shortwave radio (I gave up).
Eventually, the lacquer is dry on the panel, the parts are all in, debugging is complete and the module is working. The result: either elation and fun, or almost immediate maker’s remorse. It’s bad enough spending money on a piece of music gear that you never love. It’s really annoying spending time building one that you can’t then flip on eBay.

So far, this FM module is pure fun, an injection of random audio in the heart of the system. Every time I turn it on, something else comes out – pirate dubstep stations, Turkish music, news reports and Bryan Adams. You can filter it, sequence it, use it as a noise source, or let it modulate oscillators or open filters. Listen:

The Red Bull Music Academy includes long, detailed interviews with Don Buchla, Tom Oberheim, Peter Zinovieff of EMS, Robert Moog and Morton Subotnik.

Synapse magazine was a mid-70s journal of electronic music, where you’d find DIY projects from people like Serge Tcherepnin

Vasulka is a huge and rather poorly-organised archive of documents, interviews and transcripts, containing some gems.

Source Magazine was, back in California in 1967, a plush avant-garde journal. Many editions came with 10″ vinyl records, pages printed on transparencies or fur. John Cage was a guest editor, and the magazine carried experimental scores from composers like Steve Reich. Original copies sell for $500+, but the articles and scores have been collected in a book: Source: Music of the Avant-garde, 1966-1973 [Amazon]

What’s Next?

Tom is already on to the next build since he finished up the radio sequencer. This time, it’s a shift register sequencer. A what?

It takes random noise to fill up 4 x 4 step 4015 shift registers, shifted by a clock input. The shift registers are looped – either after 8 or 16 steps. 8 of the steps are fed into a DAC0800 analog/digital converter, which produces a 0-8 volt output.

Post of the year! The ultimate question is… do I wait until the fall when I start my circuit fundamentals course at CC, or do I start now? One can solder in an apartment right?

Thanks Guys. Huge inspiration.

ps I'm building wooden eurorack "racks". Racks as in.. pieces of ?art? rather than giant armageddon proof road "cases" . Pics of the first prototype as soon I get a couple more modules and my logo made!

Korhan Erel

This is interesting. I had this idea back in 2005 and managed to build a radio that was CV controllable with the help of STEIM. It did not turn out to be very useful though, because we used a deck radio and the tuning was achieved by rather noisy relais.

wetterberg

uh, Tom that radio module… can you.. uhm… can I like pay you to build one for me, too?

3rdness

i miss music thing.

http://thetimes.co.uk Tom Whitwell

@wetterberg – You're not the first to ask, but I don't think I could deal with the customer support! Next stage is learning to make PCBs, so things are easier to reproduce

wetterberg

that's great news, mr. Whitwell

If you ever need a beta tester in this process, do let me know.

http://www.concretedog.blogspot.com concretedog

Nice post, I too use bitsbox, bob is a great guy and his service has been impecable over loads of orders I’ve placed….in fact my entire lunnetta modular “blarp” was built with cmos 4000 from bitsbox(and indeed includes a couple of 4015′s I can recommend the lunetta/cmos approach for getting into single supply modular noisemakers as they are pretty easy to work with and there is a lot of stuff around to get people started. Including some great stuff on the beavis audio site you mentioned. Its led me into a crazy patchable sequencer built from dual d type flip flops which will be able to change step length, skip steps and may even be able to run sub sequences within a larger sequence……I am indeed down the rabbit hole you mentioned!

http://xfader.com regend

i have a soldering kit, a multimeter, access to components (i live two blocks away from radio shack), and i just bought a Korg SQ-8 that turns on but does not much else. i'll practice on that before moving onto the Casio RZ-1 collecting dust. here's my problem: i need a dust free workspace and desk. desks are crucial for projects. i already have one for my DAW and DJ setup. Desks/Workspaces are key.

http://tagmagic.wordpress.com Jaime Munarriz

it's a very interesting modules, and it sounds really well!

Polite_Society

I wish i had the time to put into making my own modules. I'd love to learn. I barely have enough time to make music with my pre-built stuff.

freezedream

The FM radio sequencer is insane! Great post.

http://soundcloud.com/gbsr gbsr

that first video?
i would probably chop an arm and an leg off for that thing.
honestly.

http://leafcutterjohn.com/ Leafcutter John

love the radio sequencer! I know its only a matter of time before I start a modular system…..